Can Narcissists Love Their Child

It is usually misinterpreted that narcissistic parents do not love their children. Although it is not necessary their love for their child is a healthy one, they are definitely parents and they do love their kids. 

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a complex disorder that comes with an extremely inflated form of self obsession and self importance. Usually, narcissistic fathers and mothers are very difficult to deal with. Sometimes it is the child’s struggling to love their parents.

Ways to deal with a narcissistic parent is way more important as the healing from the side effects of a narcissistic parent is. Similarly, the effects of a narcissistic sister, narcissistic daughter and other narcissistic member of the family can have severe psychological effects on the remainder of the family as well. 

Narcissistic Parenting styles:

It is though very difficult to understand and narrate the complete style of narcissists parenting their kids. However, narcissistic parents brought up their kids as per their nature, that are usually signs and symptoms of narcissism. 

Following are some of the characteristics of the narcissistic parent’s parenting styles:

1.Narcissists love their children, but have extreme feelings of possess and over controlling Behaviour:

Though narcissistic parents are parents who own and love their kids.  But their style is completely different from normal families. Narcissists desire for power and have extremely controlling patterns of behaviour. They start considering their kids as their kingdom to rule on. Extreme power can be used to manipulate and interfere within the child’s life and this causes extreme mental issues related with the child’s health.

Narcissistic parents interrupt the child’s personality by taking decisions against their child’s choices. Such parents usually do not care about their child’s choices and have different choices for them. This over interruption in the child’s life is usually termed as “care” and that “parents have the right to take such decisions.”

2. Inconsistent Parenting:

Usually such parents are inconsistent when it comes to the child’s need of time and necessities. Parents having narcissistic behaviour sometimes become extremely concerned and controlling, while the other time they can be very much disturbed and distracting and might provoke serious anxiety and depression in children. Inconsistent parenting provokes serious relationship issues in childhood.

Parenting is a hard thing because it requires consistency, slow efforts and movements. When a child is brought up by inconsistent parents, the child faces serious behavioural issues with the relationships he makes further in his life. Either it is a relationship based on love or another kind of relationship. Such children are very weak in relationships.

3.Exaggeration of the Child’s Achievement :

While parents who are grandiose and narcissists have this habit of exaggerating their self importance. When it comes to children, their narcissistic attitude may provoke over possessiveness of their child and may cause a pressure on their children to exaggerate the behaviour.

This kind of pressure makes the child focus on pressure and expectations to win every single competition, and field. Such parameters of perfection might provoke anxiety and depression, when a child couldn’t make it to the parent’s choice.

Such parents boast around their child’s achievements and consider themselves the nurturers who made it possible for their child to earn the souvenir. Sometimes such parents are disturbed by the behaviour of their kid when they cannot make an achievement.

The narcissistic parents might consider it a threat to their grandiosity. Such kids hate their parents’ constant stress over their achievements, usually in an academic race. This creates a gap between the parent and the child, which requires only souvenirs and shields to be filled.

4. Self-Centeredness:

Although narcissistic parents, like all other parents, love their family and kids. However, sometimes they are very self centered and do not care about their family. This is the second extreme of the inconsistent parenting style. Sometimes parents ignore their kids because they prefer their own life and peace over everything. Such kind of self awareness and self centeredness need to be considered when bringing up the kids.

Although, kids can be over demanding because of their age and expectations, but such parents prefer their own things e.g. narcissistic mothers do not feed their child with breast milk because they consider it a threat to their physical appearance, narcissistic fathers ignoring the child’s need of time with father and might be disturbed when the kids ask for the father’s times. 

5.Lack Of Empathy:

Empathy and sympathy both are needed in a right dose for the child’s growth. Narcissistic parents show love without empathy. This can lead to emotional manipulation as well. Lack of empathy in a child’s behaviour might lead to neglected parenting, where kids feel like the absence of parents. This narcissistic growth pattern might accompany them for lifelong because mother and father were not available when they needed the safe ground of being loved and accepted.

Such kids are usually a misfit to society because they do not consider themselves worthy of love and have extreme deficiency of self love. Sometimes, they seek validation from outside and expect to be validated a lot.

CONSEQUENCES OF NARCISSISTIC LOVE ON THE CHILD’S LIFE:

Narcissistic love can create serious deficiency in the growth of a child and might trigger serious responses that remain for life long. 

Following are some important impacts on the life of child who is brought up by narcissistic parents:

1. Such kids have extremely low self esteem. They may struggle with extreme inadequacy of self worth.

2. The emotional turmoil might lead them to serious patterns of anxiety and depression, thus being unable to dwell in healthy environments 

3. Such kids suffer difficulty in maintaining boundaries and saying “no” when they are needed. This might exploit them a lot.

4. Such kids might suffer extremely low confidence and have serious relationship issues. This kind of behaviour can be very difficult when it comes to maintenance of relationships with spouses or even at work place in professional environments.

5. Pleasing people is a common sign of parents who dwell under narcissistic parents.